Swedish
Swedish ([http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/Sv-svenska.ogg svenska]) is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people,[2] predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish (see Classification). Along with the other North Germanic languages, Swedish is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Era. It is currently the largest of the North Germanic languages by numbers of speakers. Standard Swedish, used by most Swedish people, is the national language that evolved from the Central Swedish dialects in the 19th century and was well established by the beginning of the 20th century. While distinct regional varieties descended from the older rural dialects still exist, the spoken and written language is uniform and standardized. Some dialects differ considerably from the standard language in grammar and vocabulary and are not always mutually intelligible with Standard Swedish. These dialects are confined to ruralareas and are spoken primarily by small numbers of people with low social mobility. Though not facing imminent extinction, such dialects have been in decline during the past century, despite the fact that they are well researched and their use is often encouraged by local authorities. The standard word order is subject–verb–object, though this can often be changed to stress certain words or phrases. Swedish morphology is similar to English; that is, words have comparatively few inflections. There are two genders, two grammatical cases, and a distinction between plural and singular. Older analyses posit the cases nominative and genitive and there are some remains of distinct accusative and dative forms as well. Adjectives are compared as in English, and are also inflected according to gender, number and definiteness. The definiteness of nouns is marked primarily through suffixes (endings), complemented with separate definite and indefinite articles. The prosody features both stress and in most dialects tonal qualities. The language has a comparatively large vowel inventory. Swedish is also notable for the voiceless dorso-palatal velar fricative, a highly variable consonant phoneme. Resources Duolingo * A course of Swedish has been added. Flash Games and Online Games: * ChefVille - restaurant simulator, cook food and collect ingredients. Very well translated. * FarmVille 2 - farm simulator, take care of crops and animals. Okay translated. * Cafeland Badly translated but has little text. * Marketland Badly translated but has little text. * RitaGissa - “DrawGuess” - a Swedish Pictionary game. It seems like you can play it both on Facebook and on a phone. * SoccerManager - another soccer manager game. * Lost Bubble - seems to be a bubble popping game. * Popmundo - a game where you manage a musician and a band (can be a solo-band with just you, or you can join bands with other players). This game has several languages to choose from, so just change to Swedish in the list of options. * MusicManager - another game where you manage a band. It’s quite small and unknown, and only in Swedish, so you might have trouble if you can’t understand much. * HatTrick - manage a soccer team. Made by the same people who made Popmundo. Probably also has several language options. * GoodGameStudios has most of their games with a Swedish language option. Playable online or on Facebook. Videogames and ROM translation patches: * Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for the Game Boy Advance has a Swedish language option. ATTN! The Nintendo DS version of the same game does not have Swedish. * Romhacking.net Swedish translations Includes Zelda, Pokemon Silver, Terranigma, etc. Books and PDF files * bokus * las-en-bok --Free books online, viewable directly on site. * litteraturbanken * hittaeboken * bookboon --Very useful if you plan on studying in Sweden. * ebocker * dito Dictionaries * Tyda.se * The People's Dictionary *Swedish Frequency Dictionaries - The top 10.000 Swedish words News * 8 SIDOR News written in easy swedish * Klartext News written in easy swedish (harder than 8 SIDOR, though) * Aftonbladet * DN * SvD * SVT * TV4 * Nyheterna * Expressen Movies and TV Subtitles * Subscene * Subtitle Download * Findsubtitles * Undertexter * YIFY Subs Subtitles for the movies distributed by YIFY, a famous movie release group in torrent sites. * Sublearning - learn languages from movie subtitles. Flash cards of movie lines in 62 languages Movies * Swesub * Swefilmer (Most movies for free, all have Swedish dub or sub or both) * Laddanerfilmer * Filmarkivet (Older films and film clips) * Öppetarkiv (Older films and film clips) * Snabba Cash * KOPPS * Ondskan * Låt den rätte komma in * Män som hatar kvinnor * Flickan som lekte med elden * Luftslottet som sprängdes * Populärmusik från Vittula TV shows * Bolibompa --Children's show, great if you´re still a beginner at Swedish * There are many channels on youtube that have posted English language TV Shows that have been dubbed in Swedish. Here's one of them. **Kids shows are always a good place to start due to their limited vocabulary and their ability to teach you things like words and numbers. Once you can understand them without too much difficulty, move on to something harder (like a show aimed at adults). Cartoons * Rocky Anime * Sailor Moon * Pokemon (need a proxy saying you're in Sweden to watch) TV stations * SVT (watch online) Brotips * If you have experience learning this language please share it, it's greatly appreciated. * If a native English speaker works hard, they can become fluent in Swedish in one year. Someone who knows German or possibly Dutch will learn a lot faster. * Once you understand enough Swedish, understanding Danish and Norwegian along with other Swedish dialects comes naturally, without any special studying required. In the beginning you won't understand them though. * It is better to listen to Swedish in sentences than in single words or sounds, because the sound of the language can change drastically when in sentences. You need to learn the sentence melody, or the rise and fall of intonation and stress in sentences. Getting the rise/fall wrong on words sometimes changes their meaning, and in other cases makes it very difficult for Swedes to understand what you are trying to say (if you have an accent on the rest of the pronunciation of the word). * Å is the oa in boa constrictor, oar, boar, and more. Ä is like the e in bed, stead, Fred, or sounds like the ai in hair, mare, stare. Ö is made by making the eh sound (bed, stead, Fred, head) and keeping the tongue in the exact same position, while rounding the lips more as if blowing air out or saying "oo". The exact sound of ö varies slightly between individuals and dialects. The "Swedish sj" sound is like our sh sound, only with the tongue curled back more in the mouth. The end result is like the wind whistling. This sj sound varies between dialects. * The hardest part of Swedish for English speakers is "huvudsats" and "bisats", or when to switch words around according to if the part of a sentence is a main clause or secondary clause. Luckily this isn't actually important in grammar, so even if you constantly make mistakes in it Swedes will understand you without any difficulty. * The things that people say don't have rules, do have rules in many cases. They stem from rules that still exist in Icelandic or Old Norse, and just mutated over time. For example, the same rule may exist in Icelandic only with different vowels than in Swedish, so you have to be able to draw connections yourself. Swedish people and textbooks don't know these rules, but read up on Old Norse or Icelandic grammar and you will find solutions. Others * Uz-translations (a very useful website that you should definitely check out) * http://www.pimsleur.com/Learn-Swedish Try a Free Lesson Category:Germanic Category:Latin alphabet Category:SVO Category:FSI difficulty level 1